This invention relates generally to balloon catheters, which are known in the art, and more specifically to balloon catheters which may be provided with cutting blades.
Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) is a procedure which is well established for the treatment of blockages in the coronary and peripheral arteries.
The most widely used form of percutaneous angioplasty makes use of a dilatation balloon catheter. The provision of cutting blades upon the balloon catheter facilitates cutting and dilation of stenoses. An example of a balloon catheter with a cutting edge is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,616,149, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The length of a balloon which includes blades may be limited because the blades are often more rigid than the balloon and/or catheter and therefore not as flexible in bending. A long balloon which has blades may be more difficult to maneuver through a tortuous anatomy than a nonbladed balloon or a shorter bladed balloon. When treating a fairly long region of stenosis using a bladed balloon, the balloon may be required to be deflated, repositioned and reinflated multiple times. It would be desirable to have a bladed balloon catheter capable of treating long areas of stenosis with minimal repositioning. Further, a catheter having a long balloon will generally straighten along its length when inflated. It would be desirable for a bladed balloon catheter to substantially follow vessel contour when inflated. It would further be desirable for a bladed balloon catheter to follow vessel contour when deflated to aid in traversing a tortuous anatomy and positioning the balloon at a lesion site.
Bladed balloons generally have a larger uninflated diameter than an equivalently sized nonbladed balloon. In some cases of stenosis, it may be more difficult to position a bladed balloon within the stenosis prior to inflation than an equivalently sized nonbladed balloon. In some cases, a bladed balloon in an uninflated state may be too large to fit into an area of stenosis, thus requiring a nonbladed balloon to be used. It would be desirable to provide a mechanism to predilate a lesion a predetermined amount immediately prior to the positioning of a bladed balloon within the lesion.
All US patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.